Romney, the temporary last choice for a fractured -- and doomed? -- GOP coalition?

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Jan 02, 2008 at 10:50:42 AM MST

The most impressive thing about Mitt Romney is his clarity of mind. When he set out to pursue his party's nomination, he studied the contours of the Republican coalition and molded himself to its forms.

Only Brooks (and his chattering ilk) would see the gaping black hole that is Romney's belief system, and see good.

The column, a laudatory paen to Romney's "dynamic" and "flexible" political skills, chimes in on today's buzz surrounding the possible collapse of the Republican coalition, summed up ably by Steve Benen.  

...in the wake of just a single midterm-election debacle, it's obvious that the Norquistians and neocons and social conservatives aren't inevitable allies - that many tax-cutters and foreign-policy hawks, for instance, would happily screw over their Christian-Right allies to nominate Rudy Giuliani; or that many social conservatives don't give a tinker's dam what the Club for Growth thinks about Mike Huckabee's record. (So too with the neocon yearning for a McCain-Lieberman ticket, which would arguably represent a far more radical remaking of the GOP coalition than anything Chuck Hagel has to offer.) The "movement" institutions, from the think tanks to talk radio, have resisted these fissiparous tendencies, and if Mitt Romney wins the nomination they'll be able to claim a temporary victory. But if the GOP continues to suffer at the polls, in '08 and beyond, the (right-of) center can't be expected to hold, and the result will be a struggle for power that's likely to leave the conservative movement changed, considerably, from the way that Tomasky finds it today.

For Brooks, the end to the coalition is a sad event. To him, Romney represents the "old brand" of conservatism, the successor to Reagan. (Whatever that means. Reagan's been transformed into a myth, his tax raises, progressive changes to the tax code, and dovish foreign policy tendencies have been neatly brushed under the rug.) Romney's the Establishment Man who runs a good, smart, and slick campaign, not falling prey to the electorate's willy-nilly desires.

But what's interesting is that Brooks think Romney won't win the general, even if he manages to secure the GOP nomination:

The leaders of the Republican coalition know Romney will lose. But some would rather remain in control of a party that loses than lose control of a party that wins. Others haven't yet suffered the agony of defeat, and so are not yet emotionally ready for the trauma of transformation. Others still simply don't know which way to turn.

Which of these scenarios do you think describes the Montana GOP and their caucus, from which it's apparent Romney will win our Republican delegates?